First-quarter results for St. Jude Medical (NYSE:STJ) beat both its own forecast and Wall Street’s today, prompting the medical device company to raise its sales outlook for the rest of the year.
St. Paul, Minn.-based St. Jude reported profits of $262 million, or 91¢ per share, on sales of $1.35 billion for the 3 months ended April 4.
Although that’s a -1.3% top-line slide compared with Q1 2014, the bottom line grew 5.2%. And adjusted to exclude 1-time items, earnings per share were 93¢, 2¢ ahead of The Street and St. Jude.
"St. Jude Medical’s 1st-quarter revenue exceeded previously announced guidance, driven by our growth in atrial fibrillation, neuromodulation and our CardioMEMS technology platform. These results reinforce our confidence that St. Jude Medical is on track to accelerate constant currency sales growth in 2015," chairman, president & CEO Daniel Starks said in prepared remarks.
St. Jude said it now expects to log full-year adjusted EPS of $3.92 to $3.97, down from $3.95 to $4 even, but raised the low end of its sales guidance from constant-currency growth of 3%-5% to 4%-5%. Second-quarter adjusted EPS are pegged at 99¢ to $1.01 on revenue growth of 4%-5%.
